Repugnant looking Nick Cohen has discovered that the US speaks with a forked tongue when espousing the 'values' of free trade whilst practicing protectionism at home. Quite a late discovery for someone who sees himself as the saviour of political thought and intellect. Of course this is the 'trick' with US free trade: Preach what you don't practise. What would be the point of allowing free trade if it in any way undermined the hegemony of the US? Free trade has therefore always meant freeing up trade abroad for gain, while protecting prosperity in the US and not playing by their own rules. Nick Cohen appears to have only now vaguely figured this out.08 Feb 09, 9:21am (about 8 hours ago)
Cohen is the 'useful idiot', the mouthpiece for free trade who doesn't understand that his masters believe in a different kind of free trade: Namely free trade as long as it happens elsewhere. It's the ultimate capitalist-imperialist trick. Preach it, export it, use it, and make sure it doesn't affect your own country. He seems to have briefly had an epiphany, but doesn't quite understand what to do with what is for him new information. He's still a believer; an ideologue of the highest order.
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08 Feb 09, 12:17pm (about 5 hours ago)
Well, still seems like criticism of Nick Cohen's stance vis-a-vis anything is verboten on CiF (it baffles me, it really does).
So in summary (and it's the last time I ever post on NC's thread, because it's simply pointless): NC loves free trade, his threads hate free opinion.
Or rather (to make sure this post is acceptable to the sensitive eyes of those who read this thread): Nick Cohen is correct on everything he says; he is virtually infallible. Anyone who expresses a different opinion is ignorant and a buffoon. Nick Cohen is always right. I have always been wrong. Please forgive me, truth commissariat.
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Perhaps Nick Cohen ought to reconsider placing his opinions in the public domain if he is that sensitive to criticism. From inventing German words to accusing those who were against the war in Iraq of being 'pro-dictatorship', this cretin knows no limits when it comes to smearing others. Yet he demands to be wrapped in cotton wool.
5 comments:
The key words were 'repugnant looking'. That's why it vanished. Irrespective of what came later which hit the mark.
Perfecting the art of saying something everyone will understand without actually saying it really does take practice.
Back later....
What I mean by this is a survival strategy for comments on CiF.
I've learnt to live with the fact that censorship is actualy positive for two reasons,
Firstly, it makes you all the more angry that you should be heard, if gratuitous' abuse isn't the purpose.
Secondly, you learn how better to use language in an ironical and satirical way.
Even if that is lost on CiF amidst the crowd of ideologue fanatics and mediocre media junkies, it's good for YOU.
I actually have the impresion Cohen is an alcoholic. The picture seems to show it and his articles are all over the place.
Huge generalisations, little in the way of real facts and the idea he has some kind of insight into the leftist 'mindset'.
He staked all on being some new Orwell because he thought he would be on the winning side in Iraq.
Now he's steadily slithering backwards without admitting anything was wrong with his worldview.
Every piece he writes attempts to uphold his own egotistical projections about the Iraq War. That's why he had to attack Obama.
The only thing Cohen cares about is his credo as some new Orwell who supposedly deals with the truths the 'liberal left' is too soft to do.
The thing that is most loathesome about it is the fake pose of 'gritty integrity'or going against the grain.
Developing that in to a shitty contrarianism that makes a name for yourself whilst ignoring facts.
The Iraq War was confirmation of that.
I'd save the spleen a bit because Cohen is a busted flush, not least because he has none of talent that Hitchens has as a literary critic.
Someone needs to write an essay on those supposed Orwell worshippers who have distorted Orwell out of context to bolster some 'decent left' propaganda.
Karl
Hi Karl,
Thanks for your comment. In fact 'repugnant looking' wasn't part of the CiF comment (I wouldn't include such phrases in the comments). So the first part of this post was entirely designed for this blog.
It was just the latter two paragraphs (excluding the last one). There I see nothing that breaches CiF guidelines. Cohen is simply very tetchy. He treats opposition to his ideas like his own battleground and won't stop at anything to 'win'. This is why he elicits such strong responses (though my responses weren't strong, just oppositional, which is good enough for deletion on CiF).
Thanks Olching.
Yes, on reading it again,there is a clear difference between the salvaged posts and your own comment upon CiF censorship here.
I was a bit 'tired'last night.
Today I'll tell you what I think with a clearer head.
Removing the first post was ridiculous. The problem is that now they are looking out for you on Cohen blogs and so oversensitive to any thing you might write.
It might have been best to write 'Some people have claimed that Choen appears at times to be what they term a useful idiot....'...
That avoids the direct 'personal attack' grounds for censorship.
Anyway I know how you feel here.
Though I know you support Seumas Milne I find much of what he says on Afghanistan and Iraq very hypocritical. Not least as he rationalised the Soviet Union's invasion back in 1979.
I had posts removed because I pointed out that his view of 'the Iraqi resistance' was an ideological fantasy with no basis in the facts.
Milne personally intervened and for the only time ever on CiF the moderators claimed I had made comments that amounted to defamatory ones. The comment on why my posts vanished then vanished.
That is when they realised that I had not made defamatory comments at all. Milne is all powerful at the Guardian. To make him look a rapid ideologue on foreign policy detracts from the papers image.
To an extent, the same might be true of your spat with Cohen. He's a star Observer columnist, though I notice he has really lost a lot of credibility these days.
Even former allies have deserted him and think he's gone a bit weird as he attacks their 'mindset'. Think of his polemics against Johann Hari, another pseudo-Orwellian 'pro-liberation leftist'.
Now my opposition to Milne is not because I'm some 'Red Baiter'as I have much respect for much of what Marx and some Marxists have to write e.g Eric Hobsbawm whose Age of Extremes I often dip into.
But Milne represents the unrecontructed Leninist approach to Imperialism and that just any 'resistance' movement is to be not so subtly glorified if it stops the USA.
For me that's shown in the very use of 'resistance' as in Iraq there have only been rival insurgent groups vying for control and influence vis a vis the US coalitioned government.
But Cohen is simply the flipside of the organised 'anti-war'movement which is led by people who hold to a fanatical Islamo-Bolshevik ideology.
Remember Neoconservatism itself has its origins in opposition to the totalitarian NLF that was fighting the US in Vietnam and that split the left there after 1968.
Since then neoconservatives have sought to project US military powers as an extension of the early revolutionary elan of the American Creed globally, that is of liberal democracy as against tyranny.
The neoconservative idea is to use state power forecefully to egineer the global free market Utopia that annoying dolts like Tom Friedman have been banging on about since the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
'The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas...and is called the US military'
Nick Cohen very much seems to hold to that view of things.
It ties in with his defence of US Imperialism in Iraq which was very much about using state military power to bring both regime change and neoliberal market reforms.
Many on the 'pro-liberation' left saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union and dictatorships in Eastern Europe as some kind of protoype with the additional help here of the actual use of the US military.
Thanks Karl. I agree with much of what you say; particularly the notion of having one's card marked in certain threads.
I don't necessarily support Milne, by the way. I think a lot of his analyses are simplistic, which is why I usually stay away from Milne threads. In other words, I have no real issue with people attacking Milne. Fine by me.
I know you are critical of Pilger, but I suspect here I differ from you. I do see Pilger as 'genuine' (unlike Milne, who often employs populist measures to win arguments, much in the same way Cohen smears his opponents with impossible tags), sometimes a little overenthusiastic, but still genuine. But that's a discussion for another day I feel.
Cohen certainly is (or has been) the flagship of The Observer. I shouldn't really post on his threads again, but then again, if he places his views in the public domain open to comments, he is kind of asking for it. I suppose we are all a bit too pedantic in this respect.
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